The Hearts of the Falmer
by robinwitch1
Summary: The Dwemer enslavement of the Snow Elves and their transformation into the Betrayed, or the Falmer, outlasted the Dwemer themselves by thousands of years. This is the story of how it was eventually brought to an end. (Replaces chapters formerly published as separate stories.)
1. Prologue

_**The Hearts of the Falmer**_

**Prologue: One of Our Own**

The stone bed was slippery with her blood. Splashes and drips of it trailed all across the floor to the entrance, marking a glittering path along which she had been carried into this dim and ruinous Dwemer chamber, lit only by a profusion of glowing mushrooms growing along the far wall. She moaned softly, steadily quieting as the life slipped out of her to pool and glitter on the floor. Her eyes were shut tight, face twisted with pain, but even the strength for that was fading, each shudder less violent than the last.

There was the sound of soft but hurried footsteps, and two figures entered the room. Falmer; one young, and one much older, limping noticeably, in the dress of a shaman. They came to the side of the bed, and halted. The shaman laid his hand on the girl's brow, and she quieted at once. When he removed it, she raised her hand weakly as if to bring it back, and then let it fall back again with a moan.

"You are determined to attempt this?" the young Falmer said, in a tone that expressed doubt and exasperation in equal measure. "One so young can scarcely be considered essential. It was an accident. And you were injured yourself."

The reply was immediate, the old shaman's tone sharp and impatient.

"Have you learned nothing, Elchinor? Has all the time spent studying our history been wasted on you? When the strut broke and the wall caved in, this girl and her mother stood between me and the falling rock. They put my safety before their own. Now her mother is dead, and the girl is on the point of death, but I have a life-debt to her and that debt I must pay. Such things are not to be forgotten lightly. We are a people betrayed over and over again. Of all things, we cannot afford to break faith ourselves. If we do that, we will fall lower than the Dwemer."

As he spoke, the shaman ran his hands over the girl, exploring her injuries. He sighed and shook his head.

"A struggle to bring her back to life and health, true. _Just a slave_, true – yes, I know very well what you are thinking!. But loyalty goes both ways, Elchinor. Another thing never to be forgotten."

He paused briefly.

"Now to work. Watch carefully, Elchinor. In such cases, judgment is the key to success. The long, deep slash in the leg... it's going to leave quite a scar whatever we do... here is the source of the worst bleeding... an artery cut..."

The room began to glow a warmer light, as the shaman cast restoration spells, one after another, the pace at first rapid, then more deliberate. The girl's moaning stopped as she slipped from coma into a more natural sleep. In place of an agonized grimace, her face now took on a gentle smile that neither of the Falmer tending her would ever see. But the old shaman could sense the change as he ran his fingertips lightly over her in a final check, and he nodded in satisfaction.

"Bring two of the others to carry her to her quarters," he said, shaking his head with weariness and leaning against the stone bed for support. "I will be fine in a moment or two," he added, as Elchinor, sensing his difficulty, reached out to steady him. "It was not quite as bad a case as I had feared. I am not yet as feeble as you young ones sometimes like to imagine."

"And bring someone to clean up this mess as well," the shaman added, calling after Elchinor as he left. "It smells like a Dwemer torture chamber in here."


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter One: Bearing Witness**

The horse was overloaded and tired, stumbling along the path toward Dawnstar. Thank goodness it was daytime, and they should be at the Windpeak Inn before dusk. He hoped his timing had been right. With any luck, there would be a Khajiit caravan camped outside the town, and he would be able to cash in some of the junk he'd picked up before both he and the horse collapsed under the weight.

It had been a good job. _One more for the practiced hand of Gjord Glassfist_, he thought to himself. _I'll have to raise my rates._ A group of gold miners working out of Dawnstar had hired him for a preventative strike. Cave; Falmer infestation, recently established; narrow entrance not practical for a massed assault; clear the bastards out before they took a fancy to the newly opened mine across the ridge. Most sellswords would have passed up the contract. It had words like _ambush_ and _suicide_ written all over it in the invisible script that only an experienced fighter can see. But he'd remembered his father's advice, _No equipment is too expensive if it saves your life,_ and sunk every last gold piece of his savings into boots with the strongest stealth enchantment he'd ever seen or heard of. Seven thousand motherless septims. At the time, handing over all that cash to the grinning Breton he'd bought them from had been just slightly less painful than cutting his hand off. Now, he was looking at double or triple profit, even if he passed on reselling the boots. As always, his father had been right.

What would his father have done about the girl?

He glanced back at his overburdened horse. She was tied on its back, trussed up like a sacrificial goat, hands tied to the saddle as well after the third or fourth time she'd tried to get free. With a blanket roped around her, there wasn't much to be seen, but she was young, dark-haired, pretty in a grim way...and dead set on killing him. Or as a second best, killing herself. He'd only managed to capture her because she had been unlucky, missed her footing, and knocked herself silly on a wooden mine prop. Without that bit of luck, she'd probably have had his head. She wasn't blind like the Falmer; the boots hadn't fooled her.

The one swing she'd taken at him with her ax had gone through a hardwood strut as thick as his wrist as if it hadn't been there. And if he hadn't jumped back just in time, he wouldn't have been there either. He shook his head, remembering.

_Oh, just kill her_, a voice whispered to him. _Here and now. She isn't any use to anyone. She won't ever be a servant, or a whore, or a farmer's wife, or a sellsword like you. Just a danger. Until someone puts her down. Mad dog. You can't cure a mad dog, only kill it._

But he was stubborn, all the Glassfists were, and his father had told him over and over again that even a sellsword didn't kill the helpless. Sure sign of a coward, his father had said. He'd missed his chance if a quick sword stroke was the best solution. What could he do with her now?

_She's insane,_ it occurred to him finally, _that's the way to think of it. The Falmer have taken her mind. What's her name, that mage in Dawnstar? the one who keeps on saying that violence is always the worst way to deal with a problem? The mad are the business of mages and priests. That's where she can go._


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two: The Past Comes Calling**

The dreams were back.

But not nightmares this time, nor shared with every sleeping resident of the town. She'd asked around, discreetly, so as not to stir up memories of the past. This time, the dreams were hers alone, specific to Medina, Medina the Old some called her now, pacifist battlemage to the Jarl of Dawnstar. They persisted beyond sleep to flicker like will-o'-the-wisps around the edges of her waking consciousness, words more than images; what pictures there were were blurred and tentative. And a voice, a querulous, wondering, wandering voice, like an old man made child again by the unimagined treasures before him, stumbling out fragments of doggerel verse as if what he saw deserved a greater dignity than mere prose.

_Deep in Dwemer ruin they stay, hidden from the light of day..._

Dream enigmas half-hidden, half-revealed, the voice sometimes turning impatient at her inability – it seemed to assume, her reluctance – to understand clearly.

_I am but my master's voice, come to guide you in your choice...climb the height, seek the light. There are those who know, if you but ask, for aid in this your fated task._

What choice? What master? Ask whom? What task? And who in Arkay's name was the speaker? Where was he? Was he alive or dead? Damn the riddling old nuisance and his third-rate poetic obsession. She didn't appreciate anyone taking her as a fool, even in a dream. He hadn't provided answers to any of the important questions. Not yet, anyway.

She shook her head to clear some of the fog brought on by lack of sleep, and put on a thicker cloak. _Climb the height. So u__p the hill we go._ Not a bad idea to do a little asking around. Maybe that priest, Erandur, would know, the one who had helped deal with the plague of daedra-driven nightmares that had tormented them decades ago. He and the Dragonborn; but the Dragonborn had gone traveling now that things were settled with the dragons, off in Morrowind somewhere, people said, back some day "soon" but no one knew quite when. The priest, as far as she knew, still lived up there in the Tower of Dawn on the crest of the ridge above the town, serving his little shrine to Mara. But she wasn't quite sure he would be present. She hadn't seen him in Dawnstar itself for a long time.

_Climb the height, seek the light._

She pushed open the door of the White Hall and emerged, blinking, into bright morning sun reflecting off the snow, flexing her fingers. No harm in having a spell or two ready, just in case.

It was a short journey on foot to the Temple of Dawn, and peaceful. She had not really anticipated any danger. Trolls and wolves had fallen further and further back into the wilds as humans reasserted their control over the countryside, and the dragons themselves were harmless now, distant shapes circling around the mountain peaks deeded to them by the Covenant of the Children of Akatosh. Only the Falmer looked capable of causing trouble, and only for those who insisted on confronting them in the gloomy reaches they called home.

Before she could knock, the door opened and Erandur stepped out, dressed as always as a priest of Mara, but with a sword belted over his robe. He glanced left and right, uncharacteristically tense, and only then turned to address her.

"Medina... a lucky coincidence. If it is coincidence. I was planning to come down and ask your advice about some things that have come up, and there you are. Please come out of the wind... it's been a long time, hasn't it... months..."

"It has," she said, and stepped inside. From past visits, she knew what was there: a spare but neat room, living quarters and shrine of Mara, and behind the lectern a magically locked gate leading to the rest of the old temple, now sealed away. The only novelty was a large table in front of the lectern piled with books and the ruins of books, some neat and clean, some disfigured beyond all hope of reading.

"You've been doing some research, I see," she remarked, and walked over to the table. "I wonder that you can get anything at all out of some of these." She picked up and opened one charred volume, which promptly fell to pieces in her hands. "If that's what you wanted help with, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you," she said, brushing the black flakes off the sleeves of her robe. "The School of Destruction is a one-way street. I can't un-burn things, never could, more's the pity."

"Not destruction," Erandur replied. "I know how you feel about violence. It's something that has been preserved. Perhaps. At any rate, I didn't want to start meddling with it before getting a second opinion."

"You haven't yet said what _it_ is, remember. I need some detail if I'm to be of any use. I have enough enigmas on my plate already."

"No one knows how far back in history this tower goes," Erandur began. "Or how many times it has been rebuilt on the same foundations. But it seems that its association with Vaermina may go all the way back to the very distant past. A few weeks ago, I was clearing away some of the old furniture in the alchemical laboratory – actually I was looking for a bookshelf that was still sturdy enough to hold some of my volumes and light enough to move out here to the temple area – when I found a few sheets of folded parchment in a crack in the wall behind one of the old bookcases. I could tell from the parchment that it had once been protected with warding spells, powerful ones, but by now, these have faded to the point that they are scarcely noticeable."

Erandur turned to a shelf behind him to pick up a thin folder. Slowly and carefully, he handed it to Medina.

"See if you can make anything of these," he said. "I think I've gotten the general meaning, but it's too important to guess, so I'd like you to read them as well."

Medina opened the folder and inspected the contents. There were three sheets of parchment, two small and one medium, so old and brittle that it was difficult to handle them without doing damage. The ink had faded and the parchment had darkened with the passage of centuries, so that in many places the text was scarcely readable. But it wasn't hard to get the general meaning.

"My Old High Elvish was never what you might call fluent," Medina said after examining the first sheet. "But this is interesting. Very. Let me see if I'm getting the same out of it that you are... The first sheet is a formula for a potion, but not like any formula that I've ever seen before. A lot of ingredients that I don't know here. I can't follow the instructions for compounding it very clearly, either, if that's what this passage in the second section was talking about. The next paragraph mentions the Miasma several times – that was the gas that sent the people in here to sleep, wasn't it? It seems to be saying that the above potion is safer than the Miasma for very long-term use, and other comparisons... I can't follow that section very well either, too much of the vocabulary is strange to me."

"I understood it much the same way," Erandur replied. "And it is very obscure, though I probably know the alchemical jargon a bit better than you do. There's too much damage to follow the recipe without guessing. Ingredients would be another problem – one or two I can't even identify yet, and some of the ones I can recognize are extremely rare and either very expensive or almost impossible to obtain. But it seems to be a liquid variation on the Miasma gas formula, one that has been refined or modified in some way to make it less dangerous to the health and sanity of the user."

"Still wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole myself, though," Medina replied, shaking her head. "Now let's see the next sheet...Oh. Now look at _that_. A procedure to do... who knows what? Set an altar or a platform of some kind on fire – with what, oil? – and throw these things into the fire... I recognize the Elven word for glowing mushroom, don't know the others... something about the full moon... probably have to do the ritual at that time... and a door in the side of the platform will open. Damn these ancient structures, they're like onions, always another layer to discover. And then? Hmmm... something like 'open the refuge and greet the lost, and guide them to the open air.' Something still alive down there? After all this time?" She looked at Erandur. "They didn't know about this hidden chamber when you were a priest of Vaermina here, did they?"

"There were some vague rumors," he replied. "But nothing clear enough to follow up. And the chamber would have been forever closed to us anyway. The area they are describing as the site of the ritual to open the way later contained the altar for the veneration of the Skull of Corruption. We could never have thrown oil over that and set it alight, no matter what treasure was said to be behind it. But I'm sure something is down there."

"Not _something_," Medina said, her voice sharpening. "It's _someone_. You realize that, don't you? Some kind of living being. Hidden away down there. For a good or evil purpose? I have no idea. This could be very, very dangerous, Erandur. The best thing to do with this document might be to burn it right now, and leave whatever's sealed up there undisturbed, to sleep forever."

She paused for a long moment and looked at him.

"But you're not going to do that, are you?"

He replied only, "Read the third one. It's long and difficult, and the writing is tiny, and the text is broken up in places, but I think you'll get the main meaning, and you may understand some passages that still puzzle me. Go ahead, read it."

Medina carefully picked up the folder again, and moved the third parchment to the top so that she could read it. For a long time she stood there, absolutely still, only her eyes moving slowly down the text. Then she put the folder down, abruptly, and reached her hands up to her face to rub her eyes. She sniffled a few times, and then looked daggers at Erandur.

"You might have told me it's a love letter," she said in an accusing tone. "Now the whole thing is personal. Not just a cleaning-up job. A debt. You _know_ that you can't read something like that and not be drawn into it, become part of it. You tricked me, damn you." But her anger had drained away by the time of her last utterance, and her complaint carried no weight, even to her own ears. She produced a cloth from her sleeve and noisily blew her nose as Erandur sat there and waited for her to compose herself again. Then he asked a question.

"Do _you_ see any possible danger now?"

Medina shook her head. "If this letter is authentic, no. Written by the man who sealed them in, who died down there while they slept, because that was the only way he could be sure they would be secure, the only way he could be sure there was no clue remaining to tell their pursuers where they had gone. A party of refugees, on the run from something. He sealed the only entrance to their sleeping chamber with powerful warding magics, _from the inside_. But of course he couldn't get out himself then, and so he died there. Because he loved one of them, and pitied them all."

"Is that what the last passage meant?" Erandur said.

"Hm... I suppose so. But then this word...damn the parchment, it's almost given way here...move the light a bit, would you?"

She fixed her eyes on the text and did not stir for several moments, long enough to make Erandur worry that she might forget to breathe and fall in a dead faint onto the table. Finally she stirred. "Oh, so _that_ was what they were running from. I think I knew who they were now, when they lived, and how they came to be here. That word _there_," she said, indicating a blurred scrawl perilously close to the edge of the crumbling text. "You do know what it means, don't you?"

"No, I don't. To the best of my memory, I've never seen it before."

"Well, it's not as if they've been all that common for the last few score centuries or so. It's the word for what we would call a snow elf. Or Falmer, though the two aren't the same." Medina tapped the parchment lightly for emphasis. "They were snow elves."

"That explains the invocation of Auriel here," Erandur continued. "Right below it... the elven god of the sun. I had wondered why that was there. They were a small group of snow elf pilgrims, I suppose... yes, there it is. I suspect they had walked the pilgrim path that the Dragonborn took much later... I'm not sure, but I think the best guess might be that they were in Hidden Valley at the time the Snow Elves yielded to the Dwemer, and when this group came back and learned what had happened, they tried to escape rather than submit."

Medina continued to scan the parchment, with the occasional half-suppressed sniffle that she tried desperately to conceal. "It's a pity that this section here has partly disintegrated... but I think I can put most of it together. They were running, wanted criminals with nowhere to go, trapped, with their only choice whether they wanted to be killed by the Nords or by the Dwemer. They found this tower and, desperate I suppose, begged the wizard who lived here for aid, or failing that, a quick death...he chose to aid them and they stayed with him for a time... and then the Dwemer seem to have picked up their trail again. And... I think... by that time, the wizard and one of the female members of the party, a sorcerer like he was, had become very close. So he took them all... I think about six in the group... to a secret chamber cut into the rock in an even earlier age, far below this tower... the upper parts of the tower seem to have been quite different then, who knows how many times these foundations have supported a new building?... He concealed them down there and put them all to sleep with a modified version of the Miasma... it doesn't say if he was a devotee of Vaermina or whether he simply learned the formula from one of her faithful and worked on it himself afterward... so that his love and her companions could outwait the Dwemer.

"But it wasn't enough merely to put them to sleep. They had to be sealed away too, or they would just be _killed_ in their sleep. And this had to be done from inside, as we just read, to ensure it could not be detected from the outside. And it had taken more of the drug than he had anticipated to prepare them for the centuries, and there was none left for him. So it says that he was..."

Erandur cut in: "_Will_, I think. Future tense."

"Says that he _will_...damn his tiny handwriting...leave information to explain what had happened, protected by wards and enchantments against being discovered by the wrong people. That must be what we're reading now... And then he will seal the chamber, lie down at the foot of his sleeping beloved's sarcophagus, and take poison. And remain with her gift forever? What does _that_ mean? His bones, or something more? Perhaps he is haunting the chamber down there, then. Hope he doesn't give us any trouble...

"The last part has almost fallen to pieces but I think it was personal... how much he loved her. See, there, that sentence that's almost intact – he thanks the gods that they were able to be together, even for such a short time. He writes it more than once, I think. But the parchment has decayed there, near the bottom edge, and most of what he wrote at the end has gone to dust."

They sat down on opposite sides of the table, the parchments on the table between them, deep in their own thoughts. Medina was about to begin speaking again when the silence inside the tower was shattered by the noise of someone pounding heavily on the door. She glanced at Erandur, who responded with a puzzled shrug, before getting up and going to see who was there.

"A message. It's for you," he called from the open door. "You'd better talk with this fellow. Something's happened in Dawnstar, I think."

"It never rains but it pours," Medina muttered to herself, "First, a secret sealed chamber thousands of years old, with a romantic story and a stash of drugged Snow Elves, and _now_ what? I can hardly wait to find out." She rose from her seat and walked to the door, taking her time about it.

When she reached the door, Medina saw that the messenger was not a courier or a soldier, but rather some anonymous hanger-on from the Jarl's personal staff. Must _really_ be something big, she thought, to get one of those to run to anything other than the dinner table or the mead barrel. She gave him a sour look and said nothing, but he continued to wave his arms, too excited to notice any snub more subtle than a knee to the crotch.

"The Jarl has need of your services, Madame Mage, and the matter is urgent. Please come with me at once." He didn't so much deliver a coherent message as puff the words out, one by one, in Medina's general direction, gasping like a grounded fish. _Obviously in no shape to send running up any hillside on any errand at all_, Medina thought with a passing touch of amusement. _They must need me pretty badly if they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for people to go searching. Let's pray that the tubby oaf doesn't spoil the day by keeling over dead as the result of this sudden test of his physical fitness._

The messenger was out of line in a few other ways as well, and Medina decided she needed to set him straight before anything else. "Wait just one minute," she snapped, in an exasperated voice, as he reached out to tug on her arm. "I am the Court Mage, _not_ the Third Assistant Part-Time Chambermaid. I need to know the wheres and whys and whats and whos of a situation before I jump into the middle of it. What on earth has happened to bring you here in such a state?"

Getting the details out of him proved trying, since he remained breathlessly incoherent, was none too bright at the best of times, and tended to go back and forth several times over the same points, forgetting what he had already mentioned. But with Erandur's assistance, Medina eventually managed to put together a picture of what was going on.

Just after she had left Dawnstar, some sellsword or other had brought in a madwoman, or what he said was a madwoman, all tied up, for Medina to practice her arts on. He had found her in a Falmer warren, he told the guards. The madwoman had been quiet until after the sellsword had departed, and they had left her, bound, in one of the chambers directly off the main hall of the Jarl's longhouse. But somehow she had gotten at least partially free. A quick-witted guard had managed to slam and bolt the door on her before she escaped the room, so she wasn't running loose, but from outside it sounded as if she was venting her rage and frustration by smashing everything in the room that she could get her hands on. And there matters stood for the moment: since she was not in her right mind, and was no danger to anyone else for the time being, they could hardly kill her, but they couldn't just leave her there either. For one thing, at the rate she was going, sooner or later she would manage to bash a hole in the wall, and then they'd be forced to use their weapons on her for their own safety.

"Where did the sellsword go, the one who found her?" Erandur asked at the end.

The messenger replied, still wheezing, "We don't, we don't exactly know. He didn't stay long. Said he had to catch up to a Khajiit caravan on the road, that they owed him money or something."

"Oh, rubbish," Medina snapped. "If the caravans are keeping to schedule, and there's no reason to believe they're not, there will be one in tomorrow. The next isn't for ten days or so. If he'd wanted to find a caravan that badly, he would have waited a day for the one that's coming, not gone running off after one that had more than a week's head start on him. He just told you the first thing that came into his head so that he could dump the girl on you and leave in a hurry, and you simple-minded fools swallowed it whole."

"You'd better go," Erandur said to Medina. "We can't do anything about this other affair for a while anyway. I have to figure out the rest of the details of the ritual to open the door, and I'll probably have to make a trip to Windhelm to get some of the materials. I doubt if our local alchemy shop has them. Besides, it's new moon tonight. We'll have plenty of time. I won't try anything without you knowing about it first, anyway."

Medina nodded. "It's not as if there's any hurry. So many years... another month or two won't make any difference. And we have to think of what to do with them as well, after we release them – presuming they're still alive. I can't even imagine how confused and upset they will be at all that's happened. The very _last_ thing we need is for them to develop mental problems from the stress."

Erandor stood thinking for a moment.

"I may know someone who can help with that too," he finally said. "She has a _unique_ understanding of what they've gone through, let's just leave it at that. But I don't know if she's got the time to come all the way up here. She's a busy person. I can ask, though."

"Please do. I'll be back as soon as this crazy lady is taken care of. Mind you, that might take a while. It sounds like a stubborn case. If there are any urgent developments, you'll be able to find me easily enough in Dawnstar. I doubt I'll be doing much traveling in the near future."

It was not until Medina was half-way back to Dawnstar that she realized that she had completely forgotten to tell Erandur about the dreams she had been having. _Oh well_, she thought. _Time enough for that later_. If there was a delay, perhaps that rhyming old fool would provide more details to work with. Something a bit more specific than _climb the height, seek the light_, she hoped.


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: A Dark Road Home**

When Madina got her first close look at the madwoman, after knocking her out with a barrage of spells that would have felled a mammoth, she was shocked.

"You haven't hit her? Not at all? Then how in the name of all the Nine did she get so messed up? She looks as if she'd been pulled out of the business end of a rockslide."

"She did it all herself," the guard standing by the door replied, a bit defensive. "No way to stop her. If we'd gone in there, we _would_ have had to kill her. She was just like a wildcat, smashing things, throwing them around. Look, over against the back wall in there, she tore the doors off that oak cupboard with her bare hands."

"When she realized she couldn't get at us," a second guard added, "she started in on herself. Smashing her head against the floor, banging her arms on anything sticking out, until she lost consciousness. If there had been a knife or anything like that in there, she'd have cut her own throat for sure. Craziest fool I ever saw. No wonder the sellsword left her here."

Madina nodded, grimly.

"Well, if he's ever back, I'll damn sure have a word with him about that. More than a word. I'm certain he knew how violent she was. He might have warned us more clearly. Did she say anything?"

"Most of the time she was just screaming," the guard by the door said. "I thought I caught a few words of the common tongue in it now and again, but nothing I'd care to repeat to a lady, just curses."

"Hmm... can't put her in the jail. She's badly hurt, and besides, she'd brain herself on the bars." Madina thought for a moment. "Might as well keep her under restraint right here. She's cleaned the room out pretty well, I don't think there's anything of value left unbroken, and at a pinch we know the door will hold. And it's close to where I usually am... I think I can drug her enough to keep her asleep and quiet, at least until I can figure out what to do next."

Madina reached down to the unconscious woman and rolled her head gently first to one side, then to the other. The hair over her ears was clotted with blood. Madina grunted and looked up at the guards.

"Why all the damage to her ears? They're in a horrible state."

"She broke a pot, I think, and was slashing at herself with the shards," the nearest guard replied. "Didn't do too much damage, it was a clay pot. The shards aren't sharp. I saw her get frustrated with them and throw them across the room after the first few of them broke."

"Trying to cut off her own ears..." Madina mused. "That seems to make some sort of sense, but I can't put my finger on why."

"It's what _we_ do to them when we kill them," the guard reminded her. "The alchemist pays good money for Falmer ears. She must think of herself as one of them, wanted to spoil things for us. Leave nothing behind if she died."

"Of course." Madina rose to her feet and sighed. "Get some people in there to clean up the mess. We'll have to tie her up on the bed for the time being. I'll be out for an hour, need to pick up a few things... Doubt if she will wake up for a day or so, but keep her tied all the same. And thanks for sticking to your orders not to harm her unless absolutely necessary. Looks as if she did a good enough job of that on her own. It's going to be a tough case to get through successfully, but if we're patient, we might learn some things from her that we didn't know before."

-o-o-o-

It took nearly three days for the woman to awaken, not one. When she finally opened her eyes again, she was gaunt and unresponsive, except for occasional fits of quiet weeping at only she knew what grief. Madina was afraid that she would refuse to eat, but she was willing to take a little food if fed by hand, like a small child. Even so, she lost interest after a few mouthfuls, and if urged to eat more, she would begin to cry again. Instead of hostile, she now seemed to be broken, apathetic, uninterested in what went on around her or what was done to her. At first, Madina suspected that she might simply be waiting for them to lower their guard and provide her with another opportunity to escape or kill herself, but after a week or two it became clear that something basic had shifted in her. Like a zombie, the Jarl had remarked on seeing her, a body without a soul. Madina was reluctant to agree with such a grim diagnosis, but with every day that passed, it seemed more appropriate.

While the woman had been unconscious, Madina had carried out a meticulous examination of her physical features and clothing for any clues as to her condition or history. She appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties, and was in superb physical shape, or at least she had been when all this had started. Her teeth, finger and toe nails, and hair all indicated that she had been fed adequately and suffered from no nutritional deficiencies – certainly, she had not been penned as some starving slave in the darkness. Her nails and hair had been neatly trimmed. Her body bore a number of scars, including a long gash in the left thigh that would probably have caused her to bleed out if she had not received prompt medical care, but the damage was clearly many years in the past. Nearly all the wounds appeared to have been inflicted at roughly the same time, suggesting that she had been in some major accident when she was a child. She had not been whipped or beaten or otherwise physically abused recently, if ever, and she was still a virgin. Her clothing, undergarments, and shoes were of rough material but competent manufacture, and as far as Madina could tell, had been reasonably clean and in good repair before she had been captured. She was carrying no jewellery or coin, but she did have an empty money pouch with her, and Madina suspected the sellsword had stripped her of her valuables before leaving her.

Two weeks passed, with the woman slowly recovering her strength, but not her will. If anything, she became more lethargic. She seemed to understand the common tongue, at least if the speaker spoke clearly and used simple sentences, but she neither talked nor wrote herself. She easily became tired and frequently lay down for naps during the day. When she became sleepy, she would go in search of Madina and lead her to the bedside like a timid child, sitting her down in a chair beside her bed before wrapping herself in a blanket and dozing off for an hour or two. Knowing that Madina was there made her feel more secure, it appeared. She never cried if Madina was present, not any longer.

-o-o-o-

On his way back to the Tower of the Dawn from Windhelm, Erandur dropped into the White Hall, looking for Madina. He found her reading, seated beside the woman as she slept with a faint smile on her face.

"I heard about your guest," Erandur began. "Lion into lamb. The story's reached Windhelm. You've become quite famous."

"Much good that does me, or her," Madina replied, but her tone was not as sour as it had often been before. "And she's not out of the woods yet. I haven't even learned her name. The only real progress has been that she doesn't try to smash things and kill herself when she's left free. But she seems... how could you put it? As if she's lost herself and is still hunting through some dark forest, with no time or attention to spare for anything else."

"I suppose your next move depends on how she reacts when she finds that lost soul, then," Erandur said. "If she ever does."

The woman stirred on the bed, twisting her body and frowning. Madina leaned over her and put her hand on the woman's brow, and her features relaxed again. Erandur was a bit surprised at the tenderness of the gesture. Madina had never been a deliberately hurtful or rude person, but she'd certainly been consistently... prickly, one might say. The difference from her usual self was very noticeable.

Madina turned back from the bed and looked at Erandur for a moment. She must have seen the interest in his face, the recognition of change, but she made no direct response. Instead, she turned her eyes back to the sleeping woman on the bed, almost as if she were speaking to her and not to Erandur.

"She'll find it. It's very dark where she is now, we'll never know how dark, thank the Nine. I saw something like it in the Great War with survivors of some of the worst battles, people who had seen all their friends die horrible deaths around them, but who had been spared, sometimes without a scratch. Survivor guilt, we called it. The feeling that you should be dead, that being alive is a mistake that will be corrected as soon as it's noticed. But for her it's even worse. She wasn't a slave. She must have had friends in that mine. The Falmer have been her whole life, I'm willing to bet. She's been absolutely loyal to them, and in return, they treated her exceptionally well. But then, without warning, it just _ended_. She's died as a Falmer and been reborn a human being. Reborn as one of her enemies. She can't understand what's happened, and she probably still blames herself for the deaths of her friends. Perhaps she even thinks she betrayed them, though from what the sellsword said, she very nearly killed him and saved them all.

"I said she's searching for her self, but really, all she will be able to find is broken pieces and grief. She _will_ come back to the light, but first she has to do something far harder than either of us have ever done, Erandur. She has to become her own creator. It terrifies me to think of how hard that will be for her. But she'll do it."

"I will pray to Lady Mara for her," Erandur said.

"Thank you," Madina replied. "The aid of the divines will strengthen her when she comes into the light again. But right now, she is in a place so deep and dark that even the grace of the Nine cannot reach her. She is the only one who can take the road up and out of that darkness. I know she will walk that road to its end. But it will be very difficult for her at first."

Madina fell silent for a moment, still looking at the sleeping woman. Then she turned to face Erandur.

"I'm being self-indulgent, talking about her on and on. What news do you have? Do we have all the materials to do the passage-opening ritual yet?"

"Well, it was expensive," Erandur began, pulling up a chair and finally sitting down. "And I got some odd looks from the woman in the alchemist's shop when I asked for some of the rarer items. I'm back a bit late because they had to order one or two of them in."

He chuckled. "No one ventured to ask what I was going to be doing with them. I don't think they dared. The chief problem now is figuring out the last few details of the ritual, and I may know someone who can help us with that. The same person I'll be asking about the effects of their burial, as a matter of fact."

"Your mystery authority," Madina said. "Quit being such a damned tease, Erandur. Who is this person?"

Erandur was still being coy. "I don't even know if she can come... we might have to go to her. But you've met her before..."

The conversation was interrupted by one of the guards announcing his presence by politely knocking on the door-frame, the door being open.

"Someone looking for Erandur or Madina at the door, battlemage. Older woman. I don't recognize her. She's wearing a strange sort of armor, never seen that before either, and a hood. Not armed, but there's something odd about her. Can't quite figure out what. Shall I show her in?"

Erandur smiled.

"Speak of the devil. She probably tried to find me in the Tower of the Dawn and then came down here. Yes, please show her in."

He turned to Madina and smiled again.

"Now we can make some progress. It seems the gods are smiling on our efforts, for a change."


	5. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: The Only Man for the Job**

It was crowded in The Winking Skeever that night. Probably meant that two or three trade ships had come in that day, Gjord Glassfist thought to himself. Nothing that concerned him. He'd sold nearly all of the things he'd taken from the Falmer, and it was time to move on again. This part of Skyrim was far too quiet and civilized to hold much for a man of his profession, unless he were belatedly going to join the Imperial Legion as a scout. But it would have taken him twenty years in the Legion to save up the amount of gold he'd pocketed for that last job with the Falmer, so he wouldn't be going anywhere near the recruiting officer in Castle Dour.

He'd heard that there might be some opportunities south of Riften, as an escort or a guard. Nothing to touch what he'd just earned, of course, but it would keep him in the black at least. Or maybe just go back to his family, who lived on a farm near Falkreath, buy up a bit more land and hire some people to farm it for him. With the nest egg he was sitting on now, he'd be able to offer very favorable terms and get some hard-working tenants who could be trusted. Live off rents like a gentleman. Relax; go to the inn every night...

A man paused at the empty chair on the other side of Gjord's small table.

"Anyone sitting here? I've come a long way and had best get off my feet a bit, and this seems to be the only empty seat in the house."

Gjord nodded, without paying too much attention at first, and the man sat down. He was dressed like a monk or a mage, with dusty clothes and a hooded cloak colored a dull brown. They looked at each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to make the first move, and then the man inquired in a polite tone, "Sellsword?"

"That's right," Gjord grunted at his tablemate. "And a good one too. Specialize in getting Falmer out from places they shouldn't be. A whole cave-full of them last time, up near Dawnstar. But I'll do anything honest when I get hungry enough. What's your line?"

"How to describe it..." The man thought for a long moment. "Let's just say I find people and information about people. Whether they're alive or dead, where they are, where they've been, what they know, what they've been doing, and so on. Pure information, no delivering rewards or taking revenge, at least by me. A lot of it concerns legacies or long-lost relatives. Or sometimes dead ancestors, questions of descent. They can be the trickiest of all, if you have to sneak into some tomb to find evidence, and the dead aren't happy you're there."

"I hear you. Hate fighting those damned draugr myself. Like chopping down dead trees. Trees that chop back. Used to have nightmares about it."

"Oh, fire's the trick," the man said, flexing his fingers and chuckling. "Destruction magic, scrolls, enchanted weapons, no matter, something with fire in it's best of all. A thousand years out of the rain, and you burn quite merrily."

"I suppose so. And when it comes down to it, the draugr aren't nearly as persistent and prolific as the bloody Falmer. Where do all of _those_ come from, anyway? I've been in on more raids that I can count now, plus half a dozen one-man shows, just me and the best weapon I could find. But I don't think I've ever seen any Falmer but adult males. No females. And definitely no young ones."

Gjord paused to take a gulp from his tankard, and added "Not that I'd really _like_ to find a warren filled with their young. I hate killing little ones, even when it's something as repulsive as a frostbite spider. On the face of it, it makes no sense at all to wait until something's grown up before you can take it out. But sense or not, that's the way that everyone feels who has any honour at all."

"Instinct's to be respected even if sometimes it doesn't make obvious sense," the man said. "Besides, there is a reason after all when you think about it carefully. It's _much_ harder to make peace with an enemy that's attacked your family as well as you. You can talk to a man who's killed your brother on the battlefield in fair fight, but there's nothing to say to someone who butchered your children. So perhaps it's a blessing we've never found their young. One bitter memory at least that they don't have."

"Not that it makes much difference," Gjord responded. "I can't see how we'll ever have a peace with the Falmer."

The man stood up, and Gjord noticed that he was a good deal older than he had seemed to be at first glance. He shook his head, smiling.

"I can remember when everyone said we'd never have peace with vampires or the dragons, but we've had it with both for years now. There may be a chance one day to add the Falmer to that list. If we're careful, and lucky."

He reached inside his cloak and extracted from it a scrap of parchment.

"Here's the address of someone you can find in Riften who knows a bit more about the Falmer and their young. He used to be in your trade, an old sellsword. He won't talk much with me or with other outsiders, just enough to get us curious, but you might have a chance with him. Professional bonds, and all that."

Gjord gave the man a nasty look.

"And why would I want to do your job for you for free? I'm not even interested in finding Falmer young. I told you I don't like killing things that can't fight back."

"Ah, but you _are_ interested in visiting Dawnstar again some time in the future without being tossed into jail, I expect."

"What?"

"The affair of that madwoman you left them with. She turned out to be a lively one. Did a great deal of damage to part of the Jarl's hall, I understand, and some people there are of the opinion you should be paying for the repairs."

"How do _you_ know about that?" Gjord asked, in a tone that was a mixture of incredulity and irritation.

"How do _you_ win a sword fight? Because that's what you do. It's your job. Knowing things is my job. Gathering information. I wasn't so rude as to ask why, but someone with the money to pay my fee wants the information about the Falmer to be extracted from that old sellsword and taken to Dawnstar. And they suggested you as the obvious person to do it. What _you_ get out of it is a peace offering to smooth things over between you and the Jarl's battlemage, so that she doesn't lock you up and throw away the key for causing her so much trouble. See?"

He gave a broad smile. "Everyone gets what they want, ends up happy, no one hurt or dead. The sort of job I much prefer."

"You're all heart. Well, I don't have much choice, do I?"

"I'm glad we're seeing eye to eye. Oh, and as soon as possible, please. My client doesn't have all year."

He turned to the door and made his way out through the crowd without a backward glance.

Gjord beckoned the waitress over and ordered another mead. He decided to get himself absolutely, stinking drunk, as a sort of silent protest against his life being appropriated like that. And then he'd be off to Riften._The Falmer's revenge_, he thought to himself glumly. _I knew something would happen to make up for the job going so easy. Opportunities south of Riften, indeed. Bugger the Falmer._


	6. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Left Behind**

Knight-Paladin Gelebor stood on the balcony behind the Chantry wayshrine, watching the sun rise. It was where his brother Vythur had died, and where he had said farewell to the Dragonborn and Serana, so many years ago now. He had never met either of them again, though they sent the occasional message, usually concerning some relic of Snow Elf civilization that one of them had discovered or heard about. Gelebor smiled to himself. After all, where else could they send it? He was still the only Snow Elf anyone knew existed. The sole survivor, the oddity. A living relic of an age that seemed forever dead.

He was ageless – as ageless as a vampire, he thought ironically, and shook his head. That was Auriel's doing, he guessed. Vythur should have talked to him instead of forging that crazy prophecy for reasons even he couldn't understand or articulate clearly. They could have worked something out. It had been a test, he knew now, one that he had passed and Vythur had failed. Vythur had said so himself, nearly every time they met.

Vythur had visited his brother in dreams, several times over the years, only saying a few words as they walked through the dim empty forests of Hidden Valley together. Not angry, but apologetic. Reassuring him that Auriel did indeed have a plan, and that he, Gelebor, was central to it. Now he had to wait for the next step, the next development, and in the mean time do what he could to rebuild.

The first time that Gelebor had heard the injunction to rebuild, he had been puzzled. It had taken him literally years to clear even the Chantry of mortal remains and dispose of them decently. Did Auriel expect him to raise columns and restore thick stone walls by force of will and persistence alone, while at the same time keeping watch over the entrance to the Valley and the way-shrines? _Faith_, he had reminded himself. _Always faith._ If the gods command something, sooner or later they provide the means. And not many months later, those means began to appear on the doorstep of the entering wayshrine he watched over night and day, in forms he could never have imagined.

The first messenger of Auriel's grand design had been a Khajiit, of all mortal creatures. Gelebor's initial reaction was surprise, and an anger he found it difficult to conceal. Despite all that had taken place, this was still a shrine, not a tourist trap. At first, he suspected that the Dragonborn or Serana had talked too much, and that Hidden Valley had found its way onto a list of quaint and fascinating sightseeing spots for the bold and inquisitive traveler. But it wasn't like that at all, S'Mojnir reassured him. He had never heard of anyone else trying to come here. As far as he knew, it was mentioned in no guidebook and appeared on no map. He himself had been told of its existence in private, and guided there as a pilgrim, because of a vow he had made.

In Elsweyr, S'Mojnir had been a stonemason. He had suffered for years from a malignant skin infection, he told Gelebor, and had been near death when he had visited a shrine to Alkosh – the "dragon cat," god of time, who is Akatosh to men and Auriel to elves – and had been told to venerate the sun and expose his bare, diseased skin to its full power, instead of concealing his affliction. He had done so, thinking "with shamefully little faith" that at least it would kill him more quickly, but instead he was cured within two weeks, skin healed over and fur beginning to grow back. When he had returned to the shrine of Alcosh to give thanks and offer recompense, he had been told to visit the temples to the sun god all across Tamriel, and serve each in a way and for a time he considered fitting. He had learned of the road here not from tavern gossip or loose talk, but from a vision on the day he crossed from Cyrodiil into Skyrim. Now, he asked in conclusion, in Gelebor's opinion was there anything in the Valley that needed the attention of an experienced stoneworker?

Gelebor had smiled then, for the first time, and led S'Mojnir to the entrance wayshrine.

"As a matter of fact, there _is _something..."

In the end, S'Mojnir had stayed in Hidden Valley seven years, telling Gelebor that Alcosh had appeared to him in a dream and told him he should go no further, that the greatest need was here. In that time, S'Mojnir mapped and sketched the entire valley and every Elven structure and ruin it contained, in minute and precise detail, drawing up tentative plans for the restoration of each and lists of the material needed and problems to be anticipated. He was watched always, from a distance, by the Betrayed and their thralls, at first out of fear, changing over the months and years to a sort of cautious fascination. Gelebor had been concerned for his safety at first, but S'Mojnir had reassured him that Alcosh would not lead him all the way from the warm sands of Elsweyr to a snowy valley in Skyrim just to be killed by some of the people he came here to help._Faith_, Gelebor thought, and smiled to himself again.

S'Mojnir had been the first of a steady trickle of pilgrims who had arrived since him, to spend months, years, or even decades in Hidden Valley, step by step bringing it closer to its original condition. Most had been mer of one variety or another, even some orcs, but in the end all of the Ten Races had been represented. The only thing that the volunteers had in common was their shared devotion to Auriel, in whatever form and name He manifested Himself in their cultures.

With this as the work force, rebuilding had proceeded slowly but steadily. The largest of the fallen pillars and blocks still resisted any effort to return them to their proper places – they were simply too heavy and cumbersome. However, one of the volunteers presently at work on the ruins, a Dark Elf, had devised an ingenious scheme to cut these remaining pieces into manageable chunks and then reassemble them in place, holding everything together with a metal framework and a bonding mortar of her own invention. Three years ago, they had done a number of small-scale test repairs on the most exposed parts of the Chantry. The repaired sections seemed to be standing up against the winter's cold, the unpredictable cycle of frost and thaw, so in a few months they would begin using this method for the last and most difficult repairs. It would still be a very gradual process, one that would take many years to complete, but the Great Hall of the Chantry, collapsed by Vythur in the last moments of his futile struggle with the Dragonborn and Serana, was going to rise again.

How would he feel on that day, when all was finally done? There would have to be a ceremony. Hymns. A sermon. A sermon by him, Gelethor realized. The thought was intensely depressing.

What could he say to his faithful but motley construction crew? What blessings could he use to recommend them to Auriel's favor? And what would he ask for himself, to make up for the waiting, year upon year, until the Sun finally rose on Hidden Valley again to shine on everything spoiled made new, everything broken made whole again?

Gelethor suddenly realized that there was only one gift he desired from Auriel. To give the responsibility for Hidden Valley to someone else, and then allow him to die. All the rest of his kind were long deceased, and he was mortally tired of being in exile.

More than anything else, he wanted to go home.

But there was no one to take his place. If he died, would Auriel choose a High Elf, an Orc, an Argonian to succeed him? All these and all the rest of the Ten Races had served Him with perfect faith here, in the work that was so near completion. All would be forever welcome to come and be blessed by a sunlight that melted away any division of origin or culture. Still, the Arch-Curate had always been a Snow Elf. That was an immutable constant. And that meant him, Gelethor. And _that_ meant he could never die, never rest. He was in the awkward position of being irreplaceable, the last and only example of what must always be here, in this temple.

The Dragonborn and Serana. Each had understood a part of his situation, he reflected, because each had faced that part in their own lives. The Dragonborn knew what it was like to be fated to a specific role, to be destiny's thrall, willing or unwilling. She too had been conscripted for a unique place in a larger scheme, without her consent, at the beginning even without her knowledge. And Serana was all too familiar with the double-edged gift of undeath, the power to defy time and endlessly defer what to mortals was an invariable and often dreaded fate. But also to bear helpless witness to the events of year after year, until heart and mind began to sink under the weight, like a ship too heavily loaded.

Even so, both Vivian and Serana were luckier than he was, Gelethor felt. Vivian, the Dragonborn, could take cold but certain comfort from the thought that despite any success or failure, one day she would lay down her burden and pass into the Dread Lord's realm. One day, she would no longer be the Dragonborn. And then...judgment? Rewards, tasks, perhaps punishment? Who could say? But at least not interminable "challenges of office," cursed to serve in the same post forever. Serana, for her part, was and remained one of the deathless undead, but it was a choice she had made, not a duty that had been imposed on her. With every new day she was free to choose again, to return to mortality and through mortality to death, if that should ever be her wish, with little risk that her sometime patron Molag Bal would take her change of heart as a personal affront.

There was a gentle tap on a wall behind Gelebor, and a scarcely perceptible cough. He turned to see one of the youngest of the repair crew, a Nord named Loki Golden-bark, standing with his eyes deferentially lowered and a sealed message in his hand.

"A courier delivered this to the first wayshrine, Paladin, and asked that it be passed to you at once. He was accompanied by a man and a woman in dark armor who looked as if they meant business. They didn't say anything, though. The courier also asked me to tell you that you could place absolute trust in the discretion of himself and his escorts. He said that twice, and then the three of them went back along the cavern toward the entrance."

"Did he ask to be let in to deliver the message personally?" This was what couriers had done before, the few that had ever found their way here, and of course he had had to disappoint them.

Loki shook his head.

"No, Paladin. He seemed to know that the wayshrine was as far as he would be permitted to go."

"You haven't left the wayshrine unwatched, have you?"

"No, Paladin. Elaine and a couple of her friends will stay there until I get back."

Elaine was Loki's fiancé. Geledor thought for a moment.

"You said dark armor...black leather with red trim, the face and head completely covered, only the eyes showing?"

"That's right, Paladin. Do you know whose it is? You've seen it before?"

"I've run into it," Geledor replied, in a quiet voice, speaking half to himself. "Not for years now, though. Decades. The courier was right. They won't be talking to anyone."

He looked at Loki, who was desperately trying to control his curiosity and ask no further questions.

"That's the Dark Brotherhood. You saw them, though, so you needn't worry."

Loki looked puzzled. Geledor grinned mirthlessly.

"It's when you _don't_ see them that you have to worry. Now get along now, back to your post, and try not to tell _everything_ to your Elaine and her friends. But none of it is a secret, really. Just information. If the Brotherhood was escorting it, the message is more likely to be important news than bad news. Not that the two are exclusive."

After Loki left, Geledor examined the message carefully. His own name, written on the outside, was in a woman's hand, but not that of Vivian, or Shahvee, or Serana, he was fairly certain. But who else knew where to find him _and_ was able to command the service of the Dark Brotherhood as courier escorts, certainly not their usual line of work?

Something was about to change, Gelebor realized. The wax seal of the message was all that was standing between the way things were and the way they were to be. He could not bring himself to break it. Not yet.

When he stepped into the balcony wayshrine to return to the entrance to Hidden Valley, the seal was still unbroken, the message still unread.


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Breaking the Silent**

It was still an hour to dinner, and Gjord Glassfist was half-way down his third bottle of mead, wondering what else could go wrong, and what the precise consequences of failure might be. He had a sinking feeling that they'd turn out a bit more severe than simply being shut out of Dawnstar for a few years.

He'd never liked Riften much. Dank, mildewed, and if you wanted anything done of any importance, you had to grease someone's palm. Unceasing moralistic cant from the Temple of Mara, grown fat on its marriage monopoly, and a constant feeling the Thieves Guild had a calculating eye on you, as a potential mark or a possible recruit. _Everyone_ seemed to have an eye on _everyone_ else here. The City of Crossed Daggers. It felt more like the City of Knives in the Back, Gjord thought to himself.

When he had arrived in town, a week and a day ago now, he had sent a polite message introducing himself to the old sellsword, Markar Stone-arm, who turned out to live a bit to the south of Riften, on his cousin's farm. The first message had been ignored; a second one, two days after the first, had been returned in very small pieces, accompanied by a brief note to the effect that if Gjord knew what was good for him, he would send no more messages and ask no more questions.

And that was where matters stood at the present. Gjord had been conducting cautious but methodical inquiries, among shopkeepers, healers, priests, the people who worked in the inns, but his quarry came so seldom to town that most people didn't even recognize his name. Several faintly recalled Markar, but they could give Gjord little detail other than that he was solitary, taciturn, and surly.

Cutting sharp through the slowly gathering golden glow that a good mead could produce, the sensitivity to an imminent threat that had kept the Glassfists alive, father and son, jerked Gjord back to the real world. He swept his eye around the room. And then he felt a perverse sense of happiness. At least fate wasn't going to toy with him like a cat with a mouse.

It was his employer, the Information Man as Gjord had nicknamed him. He walked briskly across the room and sat down at Gjord's table, facing him. They looked at each other silently for a moment, just as they had at their first meeting. Gjord noticed that the other man didn't seem particularly angry or upset.

"We know you've been working on it, but you've had a few reverses," he began.

"You could say that," Gjord replied. "No one here knows much about him and when I tried the direct approach, he threatened to take out a Brotherhood contract on me if I ever bothered him again. Not exactly a promising beginning to a working relationship."

"We half expected it would turn out that way," the man responded, in a brisk voice. "No worry, no reflection on you. In fact, my employer was very satisfied at how thorough you were in searching for information on him from people he might have met in Riften. It's the subject's fault. He's just a little stubborn, that's all."

"As in would rather see he and I both dead than say three words to me. Mind you, I've gathered that's the way he is with everyone."

Gjord began to relax. It seemed that the Interested Parties weren't going to blame this failure on him after all. But what now?

His employer produced a small bag of septims and put it on Gjord's side of the table.

"The ball's in our court for the time being. We'll just have to shake him up a bit, until having a chat with you seems like the preferable alternative. The money's for expenses. You may need to stay here a while, up to a couple of weeks longer."

He gave an unpleasant little smile.

"I very much doubt that he'll hold out any longer than that. Judging from past experience. It's always best to get this sort of thing done without getting pushy, but he's left us little choice."

Gjord picked up the money and slipped it into his pocket. "So what should I do now?"

"Oh, just be here in the common room of the inn from late afternoon to midnight every day. And try not to drink too much. He'll be willing to talk when he shows up, but he still might need careful handling. I'd say four or five days, most likely. He'll probably blame you for the condition he's in, but don't let him. It's his fault. He should have taken the first opportunity we gave him, which was you. You're going to be the second opportunity as well, but there will be a bit of _interaction_ first. Nothing physical, but... serves him right."

The man stood up.

"Well, that's it. The longer he makes you wait, the shakier he'll be when he shows up. But as I said, serves him right. Our master is never very pleased when people insist on keeping secrets from him."

"And when I get the information?"

"Take it right along to Dawnstar. Tell the people there that you just happened to come across it by chance. They'll be too happy to get it to be picky about where it came from."

Gjord had the tact to wait until the man had left to count the money he had been given. When he did, he gave a low whistle and put it back into his pouch, very carefully. That master didn't seem to be wanting for cash, he thought. And our _master_? Who was he?

He decided that for the time being it didn't matter, and called the server over to order another bottle of mead, Black-Briar Reserve this time. Might as well enjoy himself while he could. Work began again tomorrow, but tonight at least he was free.

-o-o-o-

Markar Stone-arm turned out to be as tough as his name implied. By the end of the first week, Gjord was still drinking every night away in the common room of the inn, reflecting that he'd had worse jobs in his life. Still, nearly everyone has a breaking point, especially in the face of attacks that are both relentless and terrifying.

It was eleven days later, a little before midnight, when Gjord saw a white-haired old man stumble through the door and sweep the room with bloodshot eyes. He looked as if he hadn't slept for a week. The inn staff knew Gjord well by this time, and he'd told them to direct anyone who asked straight to him. He sat and watched out of the corner of his eye, pretending to pay no attention, as the old man approached a serving girl and asked some question inaudible through the buzz of conversation. Just as he had instructed, the girl pointed him out, and Markar shuffled over to where Gjord was and sat down facing him.

Gjord said nothing, and avoided looking directly at Markar. He was shocked by the state the man was in, and more than a little apprehensive. The Information Man had said they wouldn't be using physical methods of coercion, but Markar looked as if he'd spent a month as a punching bag for some foul-tempered jail guard. Was this a message to him as well, a demonstration of what happened to those who stepped out of line? He was in _way_ over his head, he realized once more, and the only chance of survival lay in swimming as fast as he could, hoping against hope that dry land was somewhere ahead.

Markar was staring at Gjord with a vaguely puzzled look on his face, as if he had forgotten something that he really should have been able to remember. Finally, he spoke, in a soft, wavering voice.

"You're old Glassfist's son, aren't you? Never really worked with him, but I saw you once or twice back in the day, with your father. You won't remember me, sure."

He dropped his gaze again on finishing, and muttered a single word.

"Tentacles."

"What do you mean, _tentacles_?" Gjord responded.

"Waving, snatching, catching me. From the water and the air, everywhere. You wouldn't understand. You haven't seen it. _Yet_. Eyes too, so many eyes. Eyes like clouds of flies. Black and blinking and...black. Black. Drifting around without a sound. Always after you for what you have, what it wants. No _no_ for an answer, not with _it_."

"Are you feeling... quite all right?"

The question sounded stupid even at the time to Gjord, but on the spur of the moment he couldn't think of anything more clever or subtle. The Information Man had said that Markar would need _careful handling_ after his "encouragement." There hadn't been any hint that he might be away with the fairies.

"Am I feeling all right..." Markar repeated absently, his eyes focused on the table. There was a _long_ pause.

And then Markar did something that terrified Gjord as much as anything he had ever experienced in a lifetime of deliberately sticking his nose into danger.

He started to giggle.

It was a thin sound, a titter trailing along the edge of hysteria, and it went on and on and on for what seemed an eternity until Markar finally choked on his own empty mirth and gasped for air. And then he began to cry.

"It isn't _fair_..." he sobbed over and over before he could get the next few words out. "I just want them to leave the little ones alone. It isn't _fair_. They're such pretty little things before the change takes hold and...they trusted me...I'd rather kill myself...they're children... just children that's all... never hurt anyone." After a moment, he raised his head again, and to Gjord's surprise, his voice and expression were almost back to normal.

"I don't know where the Dwemer went... after I retired, I read a lot of books about them... no one knows. But I know where I _hope_ they went."

He clenched his fists in a sudden fury.

"I hope they _thought_ they were going to green fields and peace, and then woke up in some horrible fiery pit that they can _never_ leave. I hope they stay there screaming _forever_. For what they did. What they're _still _doing. I couldn't stop it. I had to run... took what I could but it wasn't much. I found a book... with drawings, I can't read the text, no one can... I looked for a switch, an engine, controls... _anything_, but I didn't find it. So it's still going on. _Will_ go on, _never_ stop..."

Gjord raised his hand and shook his head.

"You'll have to go on a little bit slower yourself if I'm to understand this. And when I do understand it, I think I can get my employer off your back. But let's settle one thing first. No one that I know of is hunting the young Falmer, least of all me. Not to kill, anyway. To find out what happened to them. What the Dwemer did to them. If you've done the reading you say you've done, you'll know the Falmer are what are left of the Snow Elves after the Dwemer broke them. The idea might be to bring the Snow Elves back, undo the changes. It's something _like_ that, anyway. Not an attack."

"I suppose I have to trust you," Markar said. He made a face as if trying to eat food that was far too sour, but he was safely past any storm of emotions now.

"I don't think either you or the Falmer will regret it. Now, from the beginning, please. The whole story..."


	8. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: The Unexpected Visitor**

Markar Stone-arm was all alone. Not by his own choice, to be sure. Only a fool would try to enter even the smallest Dwemer ruin without an extra pair of eyes to watch his or her back. And Blackreach was enormous; no one had the vaguest idea where it actually ended. He and his party had been running pipes – crawling down the wide metal conduits that seemed to go everywhere, some still full of water or live steam, the ones they traveled broken and cold – and the section of ducting he'd just entered had abruptly decided to take him on an unscheduled tour. It had collapsed, with a scream of tearing metal, and dropped him down into the depths with it. Serve him right for always wanting to go first, and trying to move fast.

He realized at once how lucky he had been. The ducting could just as well have ripped loose and landed hard, reducing him to a pulp. It could have dropped into deep water, or into something even less friendly to life. But it had sagged gently as its supports yielded one by one, like a fat old man settling into his favorite chair at the inn, too quick for him to scramble back but too slow to do him damage when it reached the bottom.

He'd been lucky in his companions too. He didn't expect them to attempt suicide trying to climb down to him, and they hadn't. For one thing, there were a couple of new-broken lines blocking the way with jets of live steam. But they'd dropped him the party's supply bags, and most important of all, the satchel of keys and gadgets and tools needed to tackle the rough spots in the ruin, well padded out with spare clothing so as to survive the fall. It meant they were giving up, going right back to the surface, and trusting him to survive and escape. None of the things in that satchel was easily replaceable; one at least wasn't replaceable at all. It showed a touching confidence in his abilities, and probably a lingering hope that he would yet emerge with some treasure or artifact that would make them all rich. He didn't intend to disappoint them.

-o-o-o-

Three days later, Markar was still working his way along ducts and pipes, still with no clear idea where in Blackreach he was. When he left the ducts for a time, to try to get his bearings, he saw that the Falmer had marked the territory off with their customary totems, but they had not bothered to physically occupy the sections he was traversing. One reason must have been the doors: most of the chambers, large and small, had been locked up tight. He didn't have the keys, and he suspected the Falmer didn't have them either. At any rate, when he managed to enter a few of the sealed spaces through ducts or by removing service panels, there was never any trace of them to be found inside.

None of the rooms he was able to access yielded any truly rare items, though Markar did manage to find enough loose gemstones and other light-weight trinkets to make the trip a paying proposition, always assuming he survived. As far as he could tell, everything inside these rooms was as the Dwemer had left it, kept neat and dust-free by the stubborn and meticulous maintenance spiders that he was always careful to avoid.

Late in the third day, he had the stroke of luck he had been hoping for. He reached an area of machine halls and workshops again – the exact use of many of these chambers was impossible to determine – and in one room, evidently some sort of control center, he discovered a huge and complex metal map on the wall indicating how deep this area was, and how it was placed with regard to the rest of Blackreach. He whistled in surprise: he was far further down than he had ever been before, than anyone had ever been, for all he knew. But at least now he knew how to get to the main cavern, the location of the great lifts that would bring him back to the surface of Skyrim, and to safety.

Beside the control room, there turned out to be what had evidently been a small library, one that still contained about two dozen books lying on the largely empty shelves. This was a rare find indeed, and extremely valuable: as far as he knew, no one now living could read written Dwemer, but there were any number of collectors, amateur and professional, who would give their right arm for a page of original script, much less an entire book. Walk into the College of Winterhold with these, he knew, and they'd fight for the chance to shower him with gold coins until they had the ancient volumes secure in their trembling hands. Even if they didn't understand a word. For all Markar knew, they could be collections of Dwemer dirty jokes. Crazy. But if their reaction made him rich, he was willing to forego any criticism.

He picked one of the books up: the pages were tough, hard to damage, but the book itself was feather-light. He could manage the weight of them, he was sure, though the bulk was another matter. Flipping through the volumes, one after another, he selected the ones that appeared most interesting, including one that stood out for having more drawings than text. Strange drawings too: some of them were definitely sketches of Falmer anatomy, others portrayed various pieces of electrical apparatus. With all the graphics, he thought, it might be easier to make sense of the text. Maybe he'd keep this one as a hobby for when he retired.

Leaving the library with all of the books stuffed into his baggage, one way or another, Markar ran into a barrier almost instantly: a door secured with a Dwemer tonal lock, the same sort of lock that sealed the entrances to Blackreach itself. This usually meant that there was something significant or sensitive on the other side. It didn't respond to the sphere that opened Blackreach and most of the doors inside it, an object that had evidently been manufactured in quantity, since a number of copies had survived. (It was occasionally available on the open market, if you cared to pay the price.) He took out the Blackreach key and gently inserted a second sphere, one that he had discovered himself on a previous expedition. So far as he knew, his copy of this key was the only one in existence, and he still wasn't quite sure what types of door it was supposed to unlock.

The door began to move, then stopped with a click. Markar swore under his breath, took the key out again, and released a deadbolt that he hadn't noticed at first. Someone had obviously wanted to make sure the door couldn't be freely operated from the other side. When he inserted the key again, the door slid open without a sound. Markar drew his sword and cautiously stepped into the next room. He didn't expect to find Falmer, but there was always the chance of running into one of those damned spiders and having to bash it into junk.

There were no spiders. But the room wasn't empty. He heard a loud scream and a chattering of high-pitched voices. Instinctively, he dashed across the room to the only other door and shoved it closed. It had another tonal lock, and he locked it with the Dwemer key. There, he thought: you probably don't have one of these, or you would have gotten into that library and the rooms beyond. And you didn't. Now all I have to do is reverse my steps and find a different route. I've got a map, or at least I know where to find one. No problem.

Finally, he looked around at what was in the room. And the room looked back.

It was a dormitory. A dormitory for very small children, and every bed seemed to be occupied.

They had hidden under the beds, or buried themselves in their bedding, peeking out to see what this unexpected intruder was up to. The sword seemed to make them nervous, so Markar sheathed it. They began to talk among themselves, softly, in a language unknown to him.

He heard a muffled sob, and turned to his left. This was not a child but an adult. A female. The first female Falmer he had ever seen. She looked like a somewhat slighter version of an adult male Falmer, but seemed completely incapable of defending herself. She lay on the floor crying softly, and Markar realized that she was terrified, that she expected him to kill her and all the children any moment now. Damned if he would, though. They were no threat to him. He had the same sense of sellsword honor as old Glassfist would pass down to his son Gjord: only a coward lifts his sword against the helpless. But she'd have to figure that out for herself. There was no way to tell her.

He knew what had happened now. This chamber was in the depths of Blackreach, separated from the usual entrances and exits by miles of shafts, tunnels, and lifts. The Falmer couldn't open the tonal lock on the door he had come through – the other door, the one on the far side, must have been left unlocked by the Dwemer. So they had assumed the key to the lock on the door he had come through was lost, and the room was secure. They had put their children here, as far away from danger, they thought, as anyone could get...

And then he'd come crashing through the _supposed-to-be_ locked door, from the _supposed-to-be_ safe side, with sword drawn, ready for action. Wonderful, he thought sourly. Every Falmer in Blackreach would be out howling for his blood. It didn't matter so much right now – he could go back the way he came, since much of the way was sealed off with locks the Falmer couldn't open – but there was no exit to the surface in that direction. He was going to have to leave through the central chamber, one way or another. With every Falmer in Blackreach after him. Not good.

At least he didn't have to rush. The far door remained locked. It was the only entrance or exit to this room accessible to the Falmer, and they had exactly zero chance of beating the door down. Dwemer architecture ran to the sturdy. Time for a little concentrated thinking.

He stared at the ceiling, and blinked. The lights in here, as in most other places in Blackreach, were the nauseous green-blue tint that the Dwemer seemed to favor. He squinted at them again. Their shapes seemed somehow...familiar. He'd seen them before, recently. Where?

_In the book, stupid. The Dwemer book. The one in your pack, the one with all the drawings. _He took the book out and paged through it. There they were, sketches of the light fixtures, virtually identical to the ones here, and the entire room, not quite the same shape but definitely the same purpose. Color patches and graphs, and pages of what must have been numbers, probably meant to describe the tint or the strength of the light with precision. And immediately after, a dozen or so drawings of the head of a Falmer child, showing the features becoming progressively more distorted, the eyes closing up.

Damn. He should have noticed that right away. _The children could still see. _Their faces hadn't yet drawn together to render their eyes useless. They were looking at him now more openly, losing their fear, beginning to check him out in detail as without doubt the strangest and most interesting toy they had ever had the opportunity to play with.

Did the odd tint of the light, perhaps combined with something else, somehow cause or trigger their malformation? Markar remembered that there were humans who couldn't stand those lights, who ended up with headaches or worse if they were exposed. One woman he knew had had to quit dungeon crawling entirely because she developed ghastly migraines. She had told Markar that it felt like her whole head was being squashed by a giant hand. But she never had them unless she stayed under Dwemer lighting for at least an hour.

He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the children were getting closer, nudging each other, whispering. It looked as if they were daring each other to sneak up and touch him. He smiled to himself and decided to play along. It would do no harm, and perhaps it would help get across to the adult that she and the children were in no danger.

So, when the boldest of the children, a female, he guessed, from her bright yellow shift, had crept almost within touching range on his left side, he suddenly turned and looked directly at her. She froze, but stood her ground as a nervous laugh swept through the others. He puffed out his cheeks like a blowfish, and she smiled a little smile, beginning to relax.

And then, trying to think of something child-silly to make them laugh again, he blew the most enormous raspberry he could muster at her. It sounded like a huge piece of wet canvas ripping, or a durzog with a severe stomach problem letting loose after eating too many fermented jagga fruit. The children jumped and screamed, but from surprise, not fear, and the female in the yellow shift stood her ground. As the noise from her friends died down, she put on a determined face and puffed herself up until she nearly burst. Then she raspberried him right back, putting such an effort into it that she nearly toppled over backward. Her friends squealed with delight, and then began to raspberry each other, and Markar, in a ragged tattoo of mouth farts and laughter...

-o-o-o-

Gjord stared at Markar in disbelief.

"You _what_?"

"I taught them how to blow raspberries," Markar repeated, in a tone that made it seem the most natural thing in the world. "And after that, how to thumb their noses, cross their eyes...anything I could think of. Anything ridiculous. They couldn't stop laughing. And then the ones outside started to pound on the door, and it was time to leave."

"Through the opposite door, I suppose. But I can see a problem. How would the kids get out, if the door was locked and unbreakable, and they didn't have the key?"

Markar nodded slowly.

"I had to think for a while. In the end, I could see that I'd just have to leave the key behind. It wasn't strictly necessary for my escape. Thank goodness the adult female had gotten over her fright. I pantomimed what I would do, and what she had to do, and she understood. I'd leave by the door I had entered by, and lock it from outside with the deadbolt. Then she could unlock the other door, and everything would be all right.

"A pity I had to give her the key. I never saw another one like it. It was made of some dark purple material with little glittering crystals in it, and you could hear its Dwemer music clearly if you listened carefully. The music was sad, somehow... I don't know how you could describe it. Sad and slow. But giving the key to the Falmer woman was the only way I could get myself out without leaving them all to some horrible death, slow starvation or worse, and in the end, I think it saved my own hide as well..."

-o-o-o-

Nearly home.

Markar had worked out what seemed to be a secure route up to the main chamber before he left the control room. Feeling more and more uneasy about the lights and what they might be doing to everyone exposed to them, he detoured through every space on the map that gave promise of being a control center, but no matter how many switches he threw, he could see no effect. The main lighting system was obviously on its own circuit, and someone hadn't wanted the circuit tampered with.

Apart from that frustration, his long journey had gone without a hitch. It ended at a hidden and camouflaged trap door in the floor of the small building that the hapless Sinderion, whose skeleton still decorated the floor, had used as his field laboratory. The door probably hadn't been used since the time of the Dwemer, and Markar had to put his shoulder to it half a dozen times before it yielded.

He hauled himself through, closed the trap and kicked some junk over it, dusted off, and cautiously inched the front door open, the one to Blackreach cavern. And promptly slammed the door again. Damn! There was a Dwemer sphere guardian right outside on the doorstep, and it seemed to be alert and in perfect working order. It didn't matter how many times explorers smashed the accursed things up; the spider maintenance workers always gathered up the pieces and put them back together again, with the blind and stubborn persistence of well-designed machines.

What now? Markar knew that against a single sphere, he had a good chance of ending up victor, especially if he could surprise it by opening the door suddenly and attacking without warning. But it wasn't a guarantee, and his odds got drastically worse if there were any other spiders or spheres within range. On top of that, the noise of metal on metal would advertise his presence to the whole cavern. Probably _not_ a good idea.

He was still turning the problem over in his mind when he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor in the middle of a cloud of dust and dancing junk and clanging noises. It took him a moment to realize there had been an explosion, not inside the chamber, fortunately, but outside in the main cavern, close. He'd only been in the cavern once before, on a brief raid, but in his spare time, he'd read virtually every guide and memoir ever written about it, "just in case." Now what could that last bang have been...

Ah, yes. There was a Dwemer ballista mounted on a raised platform about twenty meters in front of the field laboratory, helpfully kept in working order and reloaded when necessary by the repair spiders. Useful little gadget for taking out the very sphere guardian that had been blocking his path. But who had aimed and fired it?

It had to have been one of the Falmer. Not surprising; through this cavern was the only way out, and once they knew he was on the run it would have been natural to try to head him off here. There was all the noise he had made bashing open the trap door as well. Not surprising, but the implications were interesting.

Had it misfired, gone off too early? Or did they really mean to clear the path for him? One way to find out...

He opened the door again and walked outside. It had been the ballista, though at least from this distance, he couldn't see anyone or anything near it. The outer shell of the sphere guardian was still near the door, rocking gently back and forth from the force of the blast, but the rest of the mechanism was in broken pieces scattered over a wide area. A direct hit. _That'll give the little bastards some tricky work_, Markar reflected grimly, thinking of the repair spiders that would no doubt start scurrying back and forth, collecting the bits and putting them back together, as soon as the coast was clear.

Now to the lift. The nearest one, he knew, was to his right, about 100 meters away. It was usually guarded, so going that way often, though not always, entailed killing a few Falmer. _Better try to skip that step today_, Markar thought.

He walked slowly, looking carefully to each side. He was under no illusions about how vulnerable he was if the Falmer did intend to make an example of him. But with every step he took, that seemed less likely. The Falmer were simple creatures, Markar thought, and they wouldn't relish the irony of waiting until he was one step away from escape to kill him. If they were going to do something like that, they would have done it as soon as he had come out into the open.

About half-way to his destination, Markar made a detour to the left to look over a depression that usually held at least one Falmer and one or more Chaurus Hunters in their chrysalis state. It turned out to be empty except for a developing chrysalis that was clearly nowhere near hatching. Markar knew what that meant.

_So…. they __**have**__ cleared the way. It's the only explanation for everything being deserted. No Falmer to be seen anywhere. Has to be because I left the key behind. They're returning the favor, letting me get out alive._

But an instant later he was flat on his belly on the ground, reflexes operating faster than he could think at the hiss of an arrow passing over his head. A few seconds passed, and then he picked himself up and looked around cautiously.

_No second arrow. No third. No tenth. What was that all about?_

An accident, perhaps? The shot had come nowhere near him, Markar realized. It had gone well over his head, and shattered on the lift casing in front of him, at least twice his height up. A warning? But against what? If they had wanted to stop him getting into the lift, it would have been more understandable to shoot at the ground in front of him. Or _at_ him. Sending a single arrow so far above his head didn't make any kind of sense. He shook his head and moved on, a little more quickly than he had before. Time enough to puzzle over the mystery when he was under the sun again and well out of range of anything else they might think of sending his way.

He leaned on the ancient Dwemer button that brought the lift to life, wondering as he always did how their mechanisms had managed to last all these centuries, and hoping they wouldn't choose that day to break down into a hopeless tangle of steam and splintered metal. But the button responded as it always had, with a hollow clunk of metal against metal, followed by the lift door clattering open.

Markar reached out to pull the lever that would start the lift's ascent, and then hesitated. Was there anything left to do? Of course… a farewell to his little friends, whose continued existence was undoubtedly the reason he had been allowed to get this far. He stood in the elevator's entrance and took a few deep breaths, and then blew the longest, loudest raspberry he could manage out into the cavern. It wasn't a very impressive sound; Blackreach was simply too big, the ceiling too high, the walls too far away. And he could be quite sure that the Falmer wouldn't have brought their children to witness his departure. But the adults who were there would no doubt talk, and sooner or later the children would hear of it, and remember.

Then he pulled the lever, the elevator door closed, and two minutes later he was blinking at the light reflecting from a slope covered with fresh snow, and wondering what would be the best and quickest way to get off this freezing mountain and return home.

-o-o-o-

_"__Imbecile!"_

S'hashan reflexively flinched at the old Falmer's outburst. In his early experience, such a word in such a tone had usually signaled a beating, often worse. But he was in a position of trust now, at least as much trust as a thrall ever got, personal attendant to a Falmer of high rank. And what had he done? He'd just been standing there doing his job, watching some fool adventurer duck in response to an arrow shot high above him, and then get up and resume walking to the lift, describing the scene in a low voice for his master. Why hadn't the Falmer caught or killed the intruder? S'hashan couldn't figure that out either. But it wasn't a thrall's place to ask questions. He was his master's eyes, no more. Now that he was being spoken to, he kept his own eyes down in a gesture of reflexive submission and awaited developments.

The old Falmer's hands went to his belt pouch and removed a small, glittering object. He pressed it into S'hashan's paw.

"Take this to show you speak in my name. That arrow was a direct violation of my orders. Tell that _imbecile_ that if he ever does or allows to be done _anything_ that stupid again, I will personally skin him alive. Go!"

S'hashan blinked. So the anger was not directed at him, thank the gods. He glanced at the object in his paw; it was a golden torque, one of his master's symbols of office. He'd certainly be needing it if he was being sent to insult one of the other high Falmer, he thought.

"My lord, to whom do I take this message?"

"To the most-honored Silor Sinferys, the _imbecile_ fool of fools. Tell him those are my exact words. And if you need to, and you probably will since he is an _imbecile_, remind him that any messenger sent with a badge of office is due the same respect as is the wearer of that badge. And that you have my permission – my _encouragement_ – to deal with him violently if he forgets and tries to strike you. Now go!"

S'hashan was stunned. Sent with an order to defend himself if he were beaten? Permission to _harm_ his attacker? He had never heard of such a thing, not in all the twenty-seven years he had served the Falmer. But again, he knew better than to ask questions. Instead, he spun around, and ran off at top speed, almost knocking down a younger Falmer who was approaching.

"What's going on? Why did your cat scramble off so fast? He nearly ran right over me."

"He was running as fast as he could? Good. I have trained that one well, then. Though all of you seem to think that I've spoiled him. _You haven't given him a beating in at least six months!_ Stupid. Pointless punishment loses its effect. He will get a beating tomorrow if he deserves it. So he takes care _not_ to deserve it. Simple enough for a thrall to understand, but too deep for some of us, it seems.

Elchinor stood quietly until the Old One's speech had ended. He'd heard it a thousand times before, and in fact, he agreed with most of it. Not all the Falmer did, though, not by any means.

"Any other news of our visitor?"

"We have located his entry point," Elchinor replied. "It's not passable, though, in either direction. Spider maintenance workers are busy patching up the damage. It looks as if whatever broke and made the opening he entered by was of critical importance. The thralls say it's as busy as they have ever seen a repair site. And _very_ well guarded."

"Good." The Old One allowed himself one of his rare smiles, an ancient reflex that did the Falmer little good now, though it could still be read by their thralls. "Should we block off that sector ourselves, do you think?"

"The spiders would just tear our walls down again. That's what happened the last time. And the time before. But they are taking this breach very seriously. No one else will be entering that way."

"Good. Keep someone out there at a safe distance to observe."

"It is done," Elchinor replied, the conventional reply to an order, but he did not leave at once. It was always difficult to tell when the Old One had finished talking. Because he was such a profound thinker, some said; because he was going soft in the head because of extreme old age, others muttered. Sure enough, after a brief pause, he began to talk again.

"If men and mer join forces, they can push us out of Blackreach any time that they please. This visitor will not be the last to find new ways past all our defences," the Old One said, as much to himself as to Elchinor. "There are so many of them now, and we have no place to retreat to, no place to hide."

Elchinor shifted his weight from one foot to another, restless. What the Old One said was obvious, even though most Falmer dealt with it by refusing to think about it. He tried to find some straw to grasp at.

"There are still the old dwarven centurions...what if we activated them?

The Old One snorted derisively.

"And whom would they attack? When they were last active, _we_ were the enemy. They might assume that an army of men were the allies of the Dwemer, and fight on their side. At the very best, they would attack us both. They aren't as useful as they look anyway. They were built to stand up to magical attacks, not physical ones. A few of them have been triggered, over the years, here and in other Dwemer ruins, and humans usually destroy them with little difficulty. They look strong, but they are hollow inside. Just like so many other Dwemer things."

He paused, and added in a morose tone, "They even killed our _dragon_. That's not supposed to be _possible_. But they did it, and it wasn't even a large group that time, three people at most. What if next time it's a full legion?

-o-o-o-

It was very late when Markar finished telling Gjord all that he could remember, and the inn had quieted down for the night. He'd never gone back to Blackreach, he said, and he'd never told anyone how he had entered, or where he had found the children. He'd never mentioned the children at all, he said, not to anyone. "How your man found out that I knew what I know is a puzzle to me. Maybe I talk in my sleep. But there's been no one close enough to hear anything like that for years now."

Gjord just nodded. He'd always suspected that the Falmer were more complex than the snarling demons they were made out to be, but it was a lot of information to process all at once, and he was tired.

"Nothing much worth saying about what happened after I left Blackreach," Markar concluded after a long silence. "When I got home, I decided to begin by selling my duplicates. They brought in so much that I never did get around to getting rid of the rest. Too much cash, and you're nothing but a target."

He reached under the table and fished out the bag he had been carrying on the way in, dropping it beside Gjord's chair.

"There. Take them. I've got more than enough to live on for the rest of my life. Just ask _him_ to keep out of my dreams. Please."

Gjord raised an eyebrow. "Which _him_ are you talking about?"

Markar sat up and stared at him for a long moment.

"Do you mean to say...Do you know who you are working for? Don't tell me they never told you..." And he began to giggle again, the same unnerving sound that he had made before.

Gjord shrugged, although he was becoming more and more uneasy.

"A man who works for someone else that he calls his master, no idea who _that_ is. Don't really care. His business. The pay's good and he hasn't asked me to murder anyone..."

Markar nearly choked with laughter. He gestured at the bag of books, but was unable to speak for several minutes. Finally he quieted. The two sat silently at the table for several moments more, and then Markar stood up and prepared to leave. He gave Gjord one last look, an odd one, Gjord felt later, almost as if Markar were sorry for him.

"Good luck, Glassfist. Your _master_ will be happy enough to get the books. He's been wanting them a long time. But do remember to tell him that I don't want to see him or the rhyming fool that works for him ever again. A man should be able to sleep in peace in his own home."

Then he turned, walked straight to the door, and left, looking twenty years younger than he had appeared to be when he arrived.

-o-o-o-

Markar Stone-arm died a week after Gjord left Riften for Dawnstar. Heart attack, his family told the handful of people who noticed his passing. He was buried on his cousin's farm, as he had wished.

Many years later, long after peace had been restored, the Falmer learned of his resting place, and purchased the land around it to build a small temple. Because he deserved to be remembered, they told Markar's family. The family had heard the whole story by then, and they understood.

There are always one or two of the Betrayed in attendance. They sweep the grave when it is covered by leaves or snow, make offerings there, and pray for Markar's soul in the temple they have built to honor his memory. If anyone asks why they remain, so many years after his death, the answer is always the same,

"Even in our darkest times, when the Dwemer curse was still strong upon us, he kept our children safe. He never turned his back on us. How could we turn our backs on him?"


End file.
